Vintage 1965 Gibson SG Standard Fool with autographed Eric Clapton Cream record

Description

Ok grab your favorite beverage and a snack, this is going to be a long one! Today we have a vintage 1965 Gibson SG standard with the Original Complete Fool paint job like the original had right after it was painted in 1967. There are details on this guitar that are closer to the original than the original (more on that later). So sit back and relax. It's story time!
"In March 1967, Eric Clapton bought a guitar and quickly decided to give it a fresh look. He'd been through a couple of old-style Les Paul Bursts, both of which had been stolen from him during the last nine months or so. Maybe he was starting to feel that Les Pauls were somehow jinxed? Whatever the reason, he went out and found a used SG. A few days later, he took it to Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma, two Dutch pop artists working in London.
Christopher Hjort's book Strange Brew logs a rare day off for the busy Eric on March 13, and that's probably when he acquired the circa-'64 cherry finish Gibson SG Standard. We know that he used it on March 15, because the sound of the guitar's Vibrola is there on some demos Cream made that day in London. He was pictured with it a couple of days later, still with its original finish, at a gig in Essex.
Eric was familiar with the advantages of humbucking pickups and the regular Gibson control layout from those earlier Lesters, but this guitar had a quite different double-cutaway sculpted body. Like many an SG player, he must surely have appreciated the access and range and lightness of the instrument. And he always had an eye for a good-looking item.
Eric also had by now a suspicion that older guitars were better than new ones. When a magazine asked for guitar-buying advice, he said: "When you're starting, always buy a secondhand guitar, because it will be 'broken in' and easier to play, apart from the fact that the older the guitar the better it seems to have been made." That summed up neatly the argument in favor of vintage guitars in one prophetic and influential sentence.
Soon after the March 17 gig, he went off to see Marijke and Simon. Marijke told me that she and Simon had moved to London in 1966.
"We found a great Georgian-style place for rent in St. Stephen's Gardens in Bayswater," she says, "quite run down and dilapidated, but with large rooms. We had two floors, the upper story being the studio with plenty of space to paint and store artwork. This is where we met with the Cream guys for hanging out and photo shoots, as well as with other celebrities later."
Marijke and Simon became better known later as The Fool—an art collective and also, briefly, a band—and so Eric's SG is often called "The Fool" SG.
You may have heard of Marijke and Simon for their work with The Beatles, notably the mural they painted later in '67 on the Apple boutique in London (although the shop's neighbors had no taste for psychedelia, and the local council soon had it removed). For now, though, the duo painted Eric's SG along with Jack Bruce's Fender VI and Ginger Baker's bass drum heads.
Jack disliked the feel of the paint and replaced his Fender with an EB-3, a Gibson SG-shaped bass. Eric was more appreciative. Marijke and Simon's colorful work on the body of his SG featured a playful winged sprite playing a triangle, its curly hair not unlike Eric's look of the time, its toes poised near the controls, and all this set among stars and flames and clouds on a background of blues and purples and greens.
The pickguard had a separate scene. A path stretched back to a fat red sun looming over distant mountains, while graduated curves in oranges and browns and yellows followed the body's cutaways, echoed in waves of color on the headstock and the rear of the neck. On the back of the body were more colored waves and an intense set of concentric circles, which ranged from greens through to reds and on to bright yellows at the centre.
Eric wrote later in his autobiography that the artistic duo had turned his guitar into "a psychedelic fantasy," and it's hard to argue with such a concise description.
When he got the SG it had an original Deluxe Vibrola, the type with the long plate and a lyre-and-leaves motif on it, which points to the guitar's manufacture as between 1963 and '65. Almost immediately, he removed the cover plate from the Vibrola, maybe to reveal more of the artwork. Soon he disengaged the Vibrola altogether, at first leaving the arm pointing backwards and out of the way.
Later, into '68, Eric had the Vibrola's arm and mechanism removed, leaving the remaining frame as a simple, sturdy tailpiece. He replaced the guitar's original Kluson tuners with robust Grovers, a popular move at the time and one he was familiar with from his Les Pauls. Paint began to flake from the back of the neck, which must have made for an unpleasant handful, and he had at least some of the extra paint there permanently removed.
In March '68, the film director Tony Palmer sat Eric down with an interviewer on stage before a show at Winterland in San Francisco to chat about guitar playing. Eric patiently showed how the controls of his psychedelic SG worked. He explained that being a guitarist was a useful way to "play out" frustrations, because you could channel pent-up anger through the guitar by playing aggressively.
"Not the way I use it," he clarified, "but that can be done, too, with people like The Who, Pete Townshend." The interviewer asked for a demonstration. "What," Eric said with a grin, "you want me to break the guitar up?" Apparently not, mercifully—and Eric proceeded to demonstrate musical aggression for the camera.
He became fond of The Fool SG. He managed to successfully avoid the guitar thieves, too, playing the decorated instrument as his main stage guitar through the rest of '67 and on into the summer of '68. He recorded with it extensively, too, not least on a lot of Disraeli Gears.
Soon, Eric would leave his Gibsons behind, including that wonderful SG and a couple more recent favorites, a Firebird I and a 335. He became a confirmed and, as it turned out, long-term Stratocaster fan. As for the painted SG, at some point he may have given it to George Harrison, but it certainly ended up with Jackie Lomax, a musician friend of George's from the old Liverpool days.
Around 1971, Todd Rundgren acquired the guitar from Jackie. Todd replaced the remains of the Vibrola with a stopbar and an incongruous Schaller "harmonica" Tune-o-matic. He also had the body paint restored and sealed, and he had someone replace and re-paint part of the neck and the headstock.
Todd occasionally played the ex-Clapton SG until the mid-'90s, nicknaming the guitar Sunny as a nod to Eric's use of it on "Sunshine Of Your Love." Eric put together some of his guitars for an auction in 1999 to benefit his Crossroads charity, and he asked Todd to donate the SG. Todd declined, because of tax complications, but the following year he sold the guitar in an online auction for 0,000 and gave a percentage to Crossroads. The guitar was apparently sold again later for a sum said to be closer to 0,000.
After he disposed of the original, Todd sometimes played a replica of The Fool SG, as on a series of concerts in 2010 where he re-created his albums Todd, Healing, and A Wizard, A True Star. Eric, meanwhile, kept mostly to his Strats and showed no signs of returning to his psychedelic past." Story by Tony Bacon (guitar historian and author).
If David Gilmour's Black strat sold for almost 4 Million, and Kurt Cobain's Martin recently sold for 6 million, just imagine what Clapton's Fool SG would bring today at auction. The guy that paid 0,000 got a pretty good deal! But most of us can't afford anything close to that, so if there was only some alternative...
Which brings us to today's listing: A completely hand painted vintage 1965 Gibson SG Standard serial number 325200 that is the closest one on Earth to the way the original looked right after it was returned to Clapton. If you flip through the pictures in this listing you will see a print of Cream's 1967 Saville Theatre poster autographed by it's designer Bob Masse (also comes with a COA) who was helpful when I chatted to him about the colors. The photo used in the design of the poster was done right as the group received their hand painted instruments and was taken by Karl Ferris earlier in 1967. Ferris luckily took a bunch of photos during this session which two of them show the back of the Fool SG. I had never seen those photos before. The only photos of the back I saw were when all the paint had rubbed off while Clapton owned it and the way the guitar looks in it's current state (the repainted version which looks cool, but isn't like the original design at all). When Todd Rundgren had it touched up/repainted, he didn't have access to the original Karl Ferris photos (or wasn't aware that they existed) so he left it up to his artist friend to have a go at it. Also, this 1965 Fool SG has the fretboard painted! Clear coated as well so it won't flake off like the original. So quick summary of the changes the original Fool guitar went through: Original paint on the back of the neck worn off then repainted with a different design, all sorts of touch up pretty much all over the body (including on the sprite and the tip of his mallet/spoon), the original headstock was rotting off so Todd replaced it with the more modern small Gibson headstock and that was painted to look like the original, the ABR-1 bridge with nylon saddles was replaced with a wood saddle by Jackie Lomax, then changed to the 70's "harmonica" bridge, The Mastero vibrola was modified several times by Clapton and eventually was removed completely and replaced with a stop bar tail piece.
This 1965 Fool SG can be seen in action on youtube https://youtu.be/vYf2bFaBcxM and if that link doesn't work you can type in "1965 Gibson SG The Fool paint job Eric Clapton Cream White Room 60's! Hand painted Burger Guitars" and it should bring you right to it. The song demonstrated is "White Room" The guitar plays and sounds great. I easily got woman tone by either using the neck pickup or bridge pickup with the tone rolled down to 3.
The guitar serial number is 325200 and according to a photocopy snippet of the Gibson logbook, left the factory on 8-2-65 which I will include with the guitar. All pots and electronics are original. The pickups are period correct Patent Sticker humbuckers. I was told the guitar was owned by a member of Aretha Franklins band, and the pickups were changed when I got it. I wanted to bring it back to original so I bought two Patent Sticker pickups that sound amazing. Joe Bonamasa thinks Patent Sticker pickups are as good as PAF's (and that makes sense since they were made right after them). I highly recommend watching the video so you can hear for your self as I recreate "White Room". Patent Sticker pickups are in the original Fool as well. The 1964 and 1965 SG's are basically the same guitar. Same big neck shape different from the 61. The only difference is nickel was used in 64 and chrome was used in 65. I replaced the chrome covers on the pickups and added the nickel covers because I wanted this to be the best Fool recreation on the planet. One of the tuners was changed, so there are 5 Kluson Deluxe and one Gibson (which is period correct and has a patent number stamped just like the Klusons-same patent number if I remember correctly.
Included with the guitar is the Gibson hard case with yellow interior (perfect color for this guitar). You will also get the signed Cream poster, 2 different 5x7 modern printed photos of originals featuring Clapton live with his guitar. But wait, there's more! After watching a million infomercials in my life, I've always wanted to say that ha. You will also get the signed 45 record of White Room autographed by Cream's Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and the one and only Ginger Baker. That also comes with a certificate of authenticity.
I have been hand painting guitars for years and have probably done around 2000. I have painted them for famous musicians, museums, tribute shows, Broadway and Vegas shows, collectors, hard working gigging musicians, and music fans all over the world. I have been wanting to paint the Fool SG on a period correct vintage Gibson for years, and finally got the chance. I wanted to do it as accurate as humanly possible. I have seen countless versions. Some have been decent, others not so much. I put everything I had into making this the second greatest Fool on Earth. This is a special guitar that I hope goes to the right person. If you happen to be friends with Eric Clapton, this would make a good birthday gift for him ;) Thanks for taking the time to read this and be well.
-Rob Burger
Burger Guitars